UPDATE: I'd include the incomparable Erik Best's FLEET SHEET and FLEET SHEET FINAL WORD in my "approved" group. How many former Americans living in Prague do you know can speak Czech fluently, and are regularly invited onto Czech Television to opine on the current state of political affairs?! Kindly read on for more information.




Nazdar! Hope your weekend at the chalupa picking 'shrooms was restful, folks.

Mine was. Well, that is, other than for a small blip on my "cool runnins" radar...

It happened when I felt like taking a desk chair to one of the flat screens at my local cafe warren, a place where I've been compiling the next Great "American" Novel. Yes, that same one visitors to our Austrian-constructed Golden Village have been attempting to write from the "Paris of the Bloc" since the early '90s. The feat has yet to be accomplished.

Anyways, sitting there attempting to silently scribble as I was, the Sunday morning phenomenon of the Czech talking head rudely appeared. You know what I'm talking about -- those politicos trying to outdo one another with their media-spun justifications for why we should be going it alone on missile defence -- with Uncle Sam's due guidance, of course -- even if the Poles sober up from their vodka stupor and kibosh their end of the deal by not hosting the missile part of it.

*** Needless to say, I didn't take said chair to the TV. But I left and didn't leave a gratuity this time. Serves them right for ruining my morning! (Jasne, I'm learning when to be passive-aggressive in this town as well...why mess with Bohemian success?) ***

Besides, why the hell do I want to be hearing about this on a Sunday? Who gives?

Are you trying to tell me we're *not* going to be hosting a radar base in this country because a gaggle of former Reds sporting Armani suits and silk ties make strident appeals to Czech patriotism, with copious references to our sovereignty and splendid isolation?

For realz, kids, for realz...

Alright...English language in Prague. The point of today's glorious post, all hail, all hail...

Summary: too many sources for English news in this country, not enough English-language news consumers, the quality is lousy, get rid of some of them. Full stop.

I'm naming names in my post today, so the following is a list of the winners and the losers. And like most things that happen in Prague, when I deign to make predictions, things usually end up happening that way:

Publications which should stay (bonus: and my reasons why):

** Aktulane.cz's CzechNews. And not just because it's the site I blog for...but compare CzechNews' English language translation quality next time you read CTK, folks, and that pretty much sums it up. The money men back in New York seem to think so, too, evidenced by Centrum's recent acquisition of Atlas, so...

** Prague Daily Monitor. I've mentioned this in about a dozen other places on this blog, but my reasons are simple: PDM is well-researched, cogently written, and 99.9% reliable. Every day, all day, all the time. Zero excuses.

** Radio Prague's English language department. One of the few English language sources in this country which hires right, has the right inside contacts, and delivers the goods without fail. They just signed up The New Presence's former Editor-In-Chief, Dominik Jun. And if that's not saying it all, grab yourself a read of Dom's past work at TNP, and you'll instantly know what I'm on about.

** Czech Business Weekly. While the people pulling the levers of editorial power on Prague 1's Provaznicka street are basically a bunch of charlatans (don't take my word for it, just speak to the legions of former freelancers given the long hard shaft by CBW's Accounting Department), they do, on the other hand, issue great weekly news product. Stories have bite, translations (except for CBW's "Expert File" dispatches, which are dense and clunky) are sharp, and the publication's reporters are capable beyond compare.


Now for those which definitely need to be pushed over the edge, into oblivion:

** The Prague Post. Churchill's reference to the former Ottoman Empire aptly applies -- "the soft underbelly of Europe..." Like most Prague expats, we're wondering when this non-factor will morph into a simple bimonthly magazine from its present broadsheet incarnation. Nobody reads it anymore, no one buys it anymore, and it's a privately-held concern -- which basically means they can publish absolutely everything unfit to print. With a silently-uttered moniker amongst expat circles like the "Prague Pest," need I say more?

** any Prague-based English-language social networking or expatriate site which has as its primary aim the violent takedown of Expats.cz. Not mentioning any names, of course, but would you kindly find another sandbox to play in? You're not going to beat the big man, so why don't you give up already? The man's 10x smarter than you, any day of the week.

** Prague Leaders. This is an utterly atrocious glossy, and I haven't the foggiest why anyone subscribes to it. PL is a ripe, ready example of precisely what occurs when there's too much money in the kitty and not enough watts in the intellect department. Time for you to say namaste.

~~~~

Sure, competition's healthy. In a normal setting, indeed it is.

But Prague's hardly "normal." Normal in the sense that Czechs speak and read English phenomenally well, have access to all manner of competing www's on the 'net, and don't need to read about what's going on in their capital and country from some second-rate English-language publications.

So what the above "approved" publications need to do is churn out increasing quality dividends.

As for the rest of you shlubs? Bow out...and quickly. There's been a shakeout, and you've lost the contest.

Your days of choking us are officially over.